DELIVER US FROM FIREARMS

This is how you put a school on lockdown: Step one, move all children to a classroom. Step two, close and lock all access points and secure the perimeter. Step three: set up a command center and transfer authority to law enforcement until the threat has been contained.

In his career as a school administrator, Pat Keeley has had to make the call three times for security threats. Once, when he worked in California’s Central Valley, three feisty young longhorn bulls stampeded through the campus.

“It’s not always a gun,” he said.

But guns are at the center of any conversation about school safety these days. Some propose that strategically placed firearms are the solution to security problems: armed guards, tactically trained teachers. Keeley thinks the answer is fewer guns, not more.

“You know, what the President ought to do is … every single day he oughta go out (and say) ‘This many people got killed by guns in America today.’ Keep that front and center. It’s not just about Sandy Hook and school shootings. It’s about the 14-year-old kid who got gunned down in the streets.”

If you ask Keeley why he believes what he does, he starts by discussing what gun rights advocates often cite: the Constitution.

“Our Constitution very clearly says ‘a well regulated militia’” — that is, not individual, untrained citizens — “has the right to bear arms.” But his argument is rooted less in interpreting the authors’ original intent as in allowing applications of that intent to evolve or adapt as society changes.

“I think that the Constitution is a document that was written in a much different time. You know, if we want to say that the Constitution is unchangeable or uninterpretable, that’s ridiculous.” He brings up the three-fifths compromise, where slaves weren’t seen as whole human beings. Women couldn’t vote, there were no assault weapons in 1790, and one of the early amendments still prevents citizens from being forced to quarter solders in their homes. “I want our Third Amendment right protected because I don’t want some soldiers knocking on my door!” he scoffed.

Keeley was looking day-off comfortable on a recent long weekend, sporting a bit of stubble and a worn-in T-shirt while he took in the East County sunshine with his third-grade daughter. They were setting up a basketball hoop on their cul-de-sac, which is a few blocks from Santana High School. He coaches both his children’s basketball teams, and he’s the general manager of his son’s Little League. (“It’s brutal,” he said — handling the parents, not so much the kids).

Most of the year, their house — street-facing garage, white trimmed windows — looks like any other in their neighborhood.

Then election season rolls around.

“I was one of the few people with a Barack Obama or a No on Prop 8 banner in my yard. Yeah. I was probably one of the few people in Santee that voted Democrat,” Keeley said.

Many of his neighbors believe in the Second Amendment’s most generous pro-firearm interpretation. The man who lives across the cul-de-sac was raised by hippies but now takes his son, who’s a year younger than Keeley’s boy, shooting. Another man nearby has a cache of weapons he’s proud to mention but skittish to describe or show off.